None can beat Plextor. But may be costly. Other brands are in range of 1800 to 2200. LightOn is very impressive, supports wide spectrum of Media including local brands. Asus can be one more to look upon. Avoid Sony & Samsung, i would rather suggest.

I have three of them Pioneer, Plextor & Light ON. Light On is the newest one with me. Pioneer is about to die as it is arround 4 years old.

Last week I bought the Liteon 165H6S Lightscribe 16x and the LG H42N 18x witers and they are both pretty good though I find the LG has the edge in writing speed and quality over the Liteon. The LG cost me 1700/- and the Liteon 2950/-. I have read that the Liteons have a slight problem with -R media. I dont use -R media so I cannot confirm this.

Last week I bought the Liteon 165H6S Lightscribe 16x and the LG H42N 18x witers and they are both pretty good though I find the LG has the edge in writing speed and quality over the Liteon. The LG cost me 1700/- and the Liteon 2950/-. I have read that the Liteons have a slight problem with -R media. I dont use -R media so I cannot confirm this.

Click to expand...

I use only -R media with lighton and no problem. Rs 2950???? or 1950. i don't think its so costly. Presently LG is also OK.

Which speed edge? Do you mean you are writing at 18X? Which media? Speeds do not make big difference as you are never going to write above 4X or 8X on local media. It won't work properly. Safe writing only at 4X. Lot of incompatibility issues with this or that media & writers are prevalent.
__________

Desi-Tek.com said:

@ashishkhetriwal if u r in banglore than its ok but if stay in other state than never go for LITEON as its service center is only in banglore

Click to expand...

Only you need a service center in your place if you have samsung writers or Hard disks. they are most frequent failures.

Apart from this, todays breed of writers hardly last for a year or so. Therefore, should consider it as piece for 1 year.

I use only -R media with lighton and no problem. Rs 2950???? or 1950. i don't think its so costly. Presently LG is also OK.

Which speed edge? Do you mean you are writing at 18X? Which media? Speeds do not make big difference as you are never going to write above 4X or 8X on local media. It won't work properly. Safe writing only at 4X. Lot of incompatibility issues with this or that media & writers are prevalent.

Click to expand...

The Liteon 165H6S is a LightScribe writer like I mentioned - this costs 1K more then the regular writers.

If I burn same lot of discs the LG burns it a bit faster than the Liteon and when I check its quality with CDSpeed the LG burned disc shows a better result. I also confirmed the superior reading capability of the LG with commercially pressed media.

I have burned over 2 hundred Moser 8x media at 12x with no coasters in my BENQ 1640. I have checked the burn quality after completion with CDSpeed and I have not seen an unacceptable loss in quality caused by the burning of the 8x MBI media at 12x.

I have flashed modded firmware for my BENQ and Liteon which allows me to increase the burn speeds over the media's rated speed - I got these from Links in the CDFreaks forums.